Shwedagon Pagoda

Credit Line: Gift of Ian Holliday 2023, Collection of SMU
The most sacred of Buddhist grounds in Myanmar, Shwedagon Pagoda stands in Yangon as an icon of faith and the historical rallying point of civic and national causes. In 1946, General Aung San staged a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda to demand for Burma's independence from British colonial rule. Forty years later in 1988, the general's daughter Aung San Suu Kyi addressed a mass meeting demanding democracy from the military junta. Pho Tun's (b. 1981, Magway Region, Myanmar) painting takes the viewer into the sacred interiors of the Shwedagon Pagoda in a semi-abstract work focussing on the play of light and dark that evokes the serenity within the magnificent sanctuary.

The SMU Art Collection has over 70 paintings from Myanmar donated by Ian Holliday. A specialist in Burmese politics, Holliday assembled the Thukhuma Collection which comprises of Burmese paintings largely dating from the transitional decade of the 2010s, presenting multiple artistic perspectives on a society in reform. On display at School of Social Sciences and Li Ka Shing Library, the gifted paintings depict the people, culture and land, from the streets of Yangon and rural peripheries to political icons and indigenous deities.